Earthsongs
by FANtom of the Opera
Summary: *Minor Raging Star spoilers!* Emmi is gaining the sight. The earthsongs are singing to her - and they're getting stronger. In need of answers, Emmi goes to the one person she knows she can trust - Auriel Tai, who is a seer as well. But what is the life of a seer? Every gift has a price, and this is something that Emmi must learn. One-Shot.


**(A/N): At the end of **_**Raging Star **_**I was upset because Emmi would never get to talk to Auriel Tai about her developing sight. That's where the idea for this story surfaced—this would ideally take place during **_**Raging Star, **_**when Auriel's camp joins Saba.**

Emmi kept her head held high as she walked towards the tent. The maroon flaps were drawn closed and patches of fabric blotted out any light from reaching the inside. She now not only understood this, but accepted it. She didn't know the extent of her own power, or if it _was _power at all and not an extension of her own demons and madness. But whatever this power was, she didn't fear it. She wanted this more than anything—to claim her destiny.

Nervously, she peeked into the tent and drew it closed sharply behind her. Only a flickering wicker lamp illuminated the closed space, and even with it darkness hazed over everything in sight. But Emmi saw Auriel not with her eyes, but with her sight.

She sat cross-legged in the center of the tent on a slightly elevated platform. Her auburn hair fell like a rod of flaming sunshine around her shoulders and she hugged her knees tightly to her chest. In most aspects of the word, she almost looked normal. But Emmi could now see past appearances and knew now, with an eerie sort of certainty, that Auriel was anything but ordinary.

Emmi could see the earthsongs swirling around Auriel Tai, gathering around her like bits of bark in a storm. Now that the spirits and songs came to her, too, whispering in her ear when she was alone, she walked confidently towards the seer. She sat cross-legged, like her teacher did, close enough to touch her.

"Hi," she squeaked.

Auriel looked down at her, the seer's eyes revealing of the fact that this was a girl who walked between worlds. When she spoke, her voice shook with the tension of someone who had seen events far beyond her time or reach. "Emmi," Auriel said warmly. "You came."

"I had to," Emmi replied. "The voices are getting louder. The songs… I had to come to you. They said you would help. Saba was saying that you had the sight, too."

Auriel beckoned with a hand marked in dark ink. "Come closer." Emmi obliged, crawling on all fours until she was a breath from the seer. Auriel placed a hand on Emmi's, and the little girl gasped at what she felt. She didn't know if it was possible to sense knowledge, but she _felt _it thrumming in Auriel. Centuries' worth of vast, untapped energy rose and fell within Auriel—the very same energy that was coming to her, now, in the form of the earthsongs.

When Auriel drew away, her eyes were bright. "They sing to you?" She murmured.

Emmi nodded. "All the time," she said softly. "A couple days ago, someone took Saba's bird, Nero. We didn't know where he went, and Saba was frantic. But… they told me where he was. I heard them in my ears, in my brain, everywhere. They guided me to Nero. Told me where to find him. So I did. I couldn't really tell anyone, you know? They'd think I was nuts. I did, too. But now I know… this is real."

"It happened to me when I was young, too," Auriel responded, her voice lilting. "My parents were scared of me. Times were not good, and it was not fitting to be different. I didn't know what to do. I had to figure myself out all on my own. It's one thing to be scared of another people, Emmi, and quite another to be scared of yourself."

"But I have you to teach me," Emmi said bravely. "You will teach me, right? How to control it?"

Auriel's gaze turned to the closed flaps of the tent, and Emmi knew that she was thinking about how even the smallest ray of sunlight could send Auriel unconscious and into another of her visions. Would she become like that? A servant to the powers that bound her? She hoped not. She wanted to be able to harness her sight—not the other way around.

"Yes." Auriel smiled weakly. "It begins with the songs. The songs are soft for you, now. But they will get louder. Then, the visions will come." She placed her hands on Emmi's lightly. "You must be ready for them. Your first one could happen at any time."

"What about now?" Emmi demanded. "Show me one now. From you."

Auriel sighed. "Emmi, you're so young—"

"I want to know what it's like. If this is my life now, I want to know how to live it."

"But they will hurt, Emmi. If I hurt you—"

"Then hurt me," Emmi retorted. "I don't mind. I just want to know what this is going to be like. I'm brave. I won't cry. I've been through worse." She put on a steely face. "Go on."

Auriel laced her fingers into Emmi's. "Fine. But I don't know if they will come, and I don't know if they will flow into you properly. I…" She sighed. "Kellar, let the light in. Just a little."

The guard by the side of the tent peeled the corner of the tent flap from its position, and a small beam of sunlight crept towards Auriel and Emmi. As it cast a pale glow on the older seer's face, she crumpled onto the platform, which had been bordered with cushions for this very occasion. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she sank into the darkness with a sigh.

Emmi felt something stirring in her stomach. She took a deep breath just as the stirring became a roar, like an infernal fire, slowly consuming her in its blaze. In an instant, the flames devoured her and she fell back, her head aching.

_Blood everywhere. Staining the dirt, the stone walls, the clothes of the people who stumbled back and forth across the barren roads._

_ No sound remained, but for the distant echo of…_

_ Crying._

_ Who?_

_ Tears spattered the cobblestones, now so matted with dirt and blood that they looked almost black. Someone's grief was tangible, her wracking sobs shaking the entire area. She bent over a body almost unrecognizable, marred by whatever had ravaged this area and left nothing in its wake._

_ Who—or what—had done this?_

_ Then._

_ Tucked in a corner, almost invisible to the human eye, was a hand._

_ Blood was caked in the hand's nails and smeared all over its palm. But attached to the hand was an arm, and to it a body, a small one, with still-growing legs and arms and neck and head. _

_ Clumps of hair, matted and tangled, clung to the child's face and left it indiscernible. Dried blood, the color of rust, sat on the child's chest, where her clothes had rumpled and wrinkled when she fell._

_ But though the face was shadowed by death, the child's aura remained. And though her pulse had long faded from her lean, nimble, graceful body, the light around her remained._

_ Not everyone possessed an aura. Only some._

_ Those with the sight left their gifts behind them._

_ Even small seers, those who died young._

_ Little seers. Like Emmi._

_ Emmi._

_ Emmi, bleeding out onto the soil, her life dripping away into nothingness like her legacy had never touched, would never touch anyone's—_

The vision vanished and Emmi jerked forward with a sputtering cough, her hands on her heart. Air filled her lungs, though it didn't feel like she was quite breathing. Auriel sat up slowly, her eyes half open.

For once, Emmi was without words.

"Your first vision," Auriel said quietly.

"Do they… do they always come true?" Emmi asked, her stomach churning.

"They are supposed to," Auriel responded. Emmi could taste the pain behind her words. "The sight is given to those of us so that we know what _could _be. It is up to us to accept what we see, or change it.

_Or change it. _These were words meant to give Emmi hope, and they would have, if she hadn't heard the earthsongs or received her sight. Now, she saw the world differently. She saw _life _differently.

"How do I practice?" She asked Auriel.

"It will get stronger. Like it did with me. But for now, you must test limits. See how fast your sight is growing. Someday, you may be like me, Emmi. But you must live out the days you have before that as much as you can." She sighed. "I tried to control my sight when I was your age. I thought I could catch it and keep it under my finger—thought that I could choose when my visions would come. If only it were possible." She clasped her thin fingers together. "The sight is not yours, Emmi. _You _are _the sight's._"

Emmi gulped. "Okay." She got up and turned to leave. Just before she did, she couldn't help but voice the question nailing her in the gut. "I'm going to die before all of that, aren't I, Auriel?"

Silence. That was all the answer Emmi needed. She gently lifted the tent flap and left, but not before catching Auriel's final words.

"When people look death in the face, Emmi, they sometimes cry. They shy away. But if you do not—if you look at it with confidence—then you are truly brave."

_If I looked death in the face, _Emmi thought to herself as she left the clan and searched for Saba, _would I be brave?_

Right then, she knew what she needed to do.

Not because her sight told her to, or because she saw it in her vision, but because she wanted to smile at death. Laugh, even.

Maybe she'd never control her sight. She might never become a seer.

But.

She _could _become a hero.

As the earthsongs crooned to her in her head, spinning from silk that stroked her hair and enchanted her mind, Emmi took a deep breath and sang back.

And made a plan.

** Thank you for reading! Constructive criticism and comments are appreciated z:)**


End file.
